The ‘medical brain drain’ phenomenon demonstrates a tension point between the rights of health care workers to move freely, and seek to live and work where they choose, and the needs of the countries which trained them. Often, this extensive, heated, and long running debate focuses on the impacts that medical brain drain has on exit countries, which are often left with inadequate healthcare staffing levels due to the active recruitment of health care workers by destination countries. In this paper, rather than re-examine the extensive debate surrounding the impacts of health worker migration on exit countries, we focus instead on an under theorised aspect of medical brain drain – the injustices perpetrated against migrant health workers in destination countries. Healthcare workers leave their homes for better pay and opportunities but often experience declining health and discrimination. We argue that while destination countries such as the UK are often highly reliant on migrant health care workers, they regularly fail to adequately respond to their needs or address systemic forms of oppression which cause significant harm to those recruited internationally. Our analysis develops a case for more equitable and sustainable approaches to global health workforce planning.
Ojiako et al. (Wed,) studied this question.